The ZeroHedge/Turley takedown of that NYT Opinions podcast is peak 2026 decay lit. Titled "The Rich Don't Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?", it features NYT culture editor Nadja Spiegelman, New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino, and Marxist streamer Hasan Piker casually floating "microlooting" (stealing lemons from Whole Foods because corporations bad) as understandable protest Spiegelman sighs that it's "so hard to live ethically in an unethical society." Tolentino admits she's done it and felt zero guilt. Piker channels Engels: capitalists kill socially, so…

This isn't edgy debate. It's the logical endpoint of the pattern we've been tracking.

The Relativism Pipeline

Start with Burnet's hypocritical displays of love as power plays. The chattering class signals compassion for the "oppressed" by excusing predation on the productive. Shoplifting isn't crime — it's resistance. Murder isn't murder — it's justice against "social murderers." The same voices who demanded security guards stand down, who shrugged at Wine-Gate elites stuffing bottles, now provide intellectual cover for retail theft and targeted killings.

Moral relativism here is selective: rules are for thee (the deplorables, the corporations, the normies paying higher prices), not for me (the enlightened with $2.5M Brooklyn brownstones stealing produce). Transcendent values — thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill — get decoupled from any grounding in natural rights, God, or even basic reciprocity. It's pure emotivism: "I feel anger and moral justification, therefore it's ethical."

This slides fast into nihilism. If the entire society is "unethical," then anything becomes permissible for the righteous. French Revolution logic: the revolution devours its children. Today's microlooter becomes tomorrow's unacceptable moderate. History is littered with intellectuals who started by excusing small transgressions and ended up apologising for (or enabling) the guillotine, the gulag, or the flash mob.

Australia isn't immune. Aussies import these cultural exports alongside refined fuel. Rising retail theft there, cost-of-living rage, and elite virtue signalling that frames enforcement as "punching down." The same post-literate scrolling that makes deep reading rare makes these rationalisations go viral before scrutiny lands.

The Nihilism Endgame

This isn't compassion. It's the rage that dehumanises the other side (corporations aren't people, executives aren't fathers of two) and licenses mayhem. No higher order. No personal responsibility. Just power: the powerful (media, academics, influencers) get to redefine crime as justice, while the productive subsidise the chaos through higher prices, closed stores, and eroded trust.

The Left's moral relativism was once dressed as nuance ("situational ethics," "punching up"). Now it's overt nihilism: nothing is truly wrong if it feels righteous. The NYT — once the paper of record — platforms it without pushback. That's the tell. When the flagship of the chattering class debates whether theft and targeted killings are "understandable," the immune system is failing.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/moral-malaise-new-york-times-makes-case-microlooting-murder